00:00 100:00:00,467 –> 00:00:02,268Welcome to CIO Leadership Live.200:00:02,268 –> 00:00:05,955I’m Lee Renick, executivedirector of CIO communities for CIO,300:00:05,955 –> 00:00:10,043and I’m thrilled to be here todayat the CIO 100 and Symposium and Awards400:00:10,276 –> 00:00:13,613with Max Chan, SVP, CIO of Avnet.500:00:13,880 –> 00:00:16,132Max, thanks so much for joining meon the show today.600:00:16,132 –> 00:00:17,484I really appreciate it.700:00:17,484 –> 00:00:22,672and congratulations to your awardwinning CIO 100 award of your project.800:00:22,689 –> 00:00:25,859So could we kick off first bymaybe you could introduce yourself,900:00:25,859 –> 00:00:27,110tell us a little bit about your role1000:00:27,110 –> 00:00:29,295and then maybe tell us a bitabout the project.1100:00:29,295 –> 00:00:30,113Absolutely.1200:00:30,113 –> 00:00:32,565First of all,thank you. Thanks for having me.1300:00:32,565 –> 00:00:35,902I’m really, really proud of the team.1400:00:36,169 –> 00:00:36,436Right.1500:00:36,436 –> 00:00:41,307This is I think this is the fourth awardthat we have won in the last five years.1600:00:41,307 –> 00:00:42,592So congratulations.1700:00:42,592 –> 00:00:45,662Very happy with the many projectsthat the team are doing.1800:00:45,662 –> 00:00:51,084And obviously they’re delivering businessvalue and a lot of innovation with it.1900:00:51,367 –> 00:00:54,921as CIO, at Avnet, and maybe2000:00:54,921 –> 00:00:58,458let’s talk a little bit about Avnetbecause it’s not exactly a household name.2100:00:58,591 –> 00:00:59,042Okay.2200:00:59,042 –> 00:01:01,344We are one of the largest,2300:01:01,344 –> 00:01:04,848technology distributor and, supplychain solution provider.2400:01:05,281 –> 00:01:09,169we sit in the middle of a technologyvalue chain.2500:01:09,536 –> 00:01:14,290And the interesting thing,that what we do is that we offer,2600:01:14,290 –> 00:01:17,660designed supply chain and logistic2700:01:17,660 –> 00:01:24,234capabilities, expertise to, our customersto help them with the entire technology2800:01:24,384 –> 00:01:27,387lifecycle from concept to design,2900:01:28,138 –> 00:01:32,809new product introduction to go to marketall the way to repatriation.3000:01:32,909 –> 00:01:35,028Right. The management.3100:01:35,028 –> 00:01:39,382So we always try to also talkingabout how we can actually,3200:01:39,599 –> 00:01:42,569bring a customer inand maybe talk about customer.3300:01:42,569 –> 00:01:44,270Interesting thing about us.3400:01:44,270 –> 00:01:45,738as distributor. Right.3500:01:45,738 –> 00:01:48,858We have both the upstreamsupplier partners,3600:01:49,109 –> 00:01:52,262that we serve as well as the downstreamcustomers.3700:01:52,262 –> 00:01:54,414Right. Actually gets the product ready.3800:01:54,414 –> 00:01:57,684Yeah. Right.so we always pride ourselves.3900:01:57,684 –> 00:02:00,570So being ableto bring in any of our customer4000:02:00,570 –> 00:02:05,074into any part of the lifecycleand then scale from there. Wow.4100:02:05,074 –> 00:02:06,726So very exciting.4200:02:06,726 –> 00:02:10,346and, obviously as a CIO,4300:02:10,346 –> 00:02:13,399I’m responsible for not only the, it’s4400:02:13,399 –> 00:02:16,486spark, for, for the organizations4500:02:16,486 –> 00:02:19,906I also run the digital transformation,the digital strategy.4600:02:20,206 –> 00:02:22,976and I also, manage,4700:02:22,976 –> 00:02:26,896a shared company, within our portfolio.4800:02:27,597 –> 00:02:30,166that deliver solutions to our customers.4900:02:30,166 –> 00:02:32,969Oh, well,within the space that we, we deal with.5000:02:32,969 –> 00:02:33,369Right.5100:02:33,369 –> 00:02:36,356So you’re really thenacting in both areas, really connecting up5200:02:36,573 –> 00:02:40,376that technology base for for the companyright across the board.5300:02:40,410 –> 00:02:41,394That’s right.5400:02:41,394 –> 00:02:42,946Congratulations on the award.5500:02:42,946 –> 00:02:46,065And, we were just chattingbefore we started recording about5600:02:46,966 –> 00:02:50,486the importance of dataand you’re asking me, what do you hear?5700:02:50,486 –> 00:02:54,390And I said, well,what I’m hearing is that a lot of,5800:02:54,507 –> 00:02:58,695the CIOs I’ve spoken to during Covidput a lot of their data into the cloud.5900:02:58,711 –> 00:03:01,247You know, that was a solutionfor that time. That made sense.6000:03:01,247 –> 00:03:04,651But then now they’re really evaluating it,and they’re looking at those costs6100:03:04,651 –> 00:03:08,421around cloud where they needtheir most important data on the edge.6200:03:08,688 –> 00:03:11,658And a lot of sayingnow they’re looking at repatriation6300:03:11,658 –> 00:03:15,929or bringing bringing their cloud back onor their data, excuse me, back on prem.6400:03:16,162 –> 00:03:19,165So we’d love to hear your thoughtsabout that.6500:03:19,432 –> 00:03:19,766You know,6600:03:21,317 –> 00:03:22,252lucky thing,6700:03:22,252 –> 00:03:26,806is that we’re not 100% in the cloud,right?6800:03:27,006 –> 00:03:32,712and we, we are facing the samechallenges that everyone is in cloud.6900:03:32,729 –> 00:03:35,999If you don’t manage itwell, it’s going to be very expensive.7000:03:37,066 –> 00:03:41,237we we learned that, earlyon when we started our journey,7100:03:41,237 –> 00:03:46,876our transformation, to the cloud and,and and without putting in,7200:03:47,243 –> 00:03:52,615the proper FinOps, capabilitiesand overall governance, etcetera.7300:03:52,865 –> 00:03:57,020what we found is that, oh, my God, the,the, the,7400:03:57,020 –> 00:04:00,323the costs really skyrocketed.7500:04:01,224 –> 00:04:05,361and later we,we actually put that discipline7600:04:05,361 –> 00:04:09,332around it, implement this kind of lookingat how we can optimize.7700:04:09,332 –> 00:04:11,601Now we are getting it to the right level.7800:04:11,601 –> 00:04:14,871But like I sayearlier, we’re not 100% in the cloud.7900:04:14,904 –> 00:04:18,358We are focusing on use cases that8000:04:18,625 –> 00:04:22,528truly elaborate cloudenabled capabilities.8100:04:22,528 –> 00:04:23,062Right.8200:04:23,062 –> 00:04:27,300And we bring we prioritize those workloadand bring that to the cloud.8300:04:27,317 –> 00:04:27,717Right.8400:04:27,717 –> 00:04:32,338the rest of it is really a matterof what it makes sense.8500:04:32,388 –> 00:04:35,308Right? some of itwe still keep, internal.8600:04:35,308 –> 00:04:38,695In fact,as we are talking about generative8700:04:38,695 –> 00:04:42,348AI and large language model, rightwhen we started,8800:04:42,598 –> 00:04:48,588just like everyone else, we leverage what,providers, offering in the cloud.8900:04:48,588 –> 00:04:54,360But we all knew from the very beginningwith the cloud experience and also what,9000:04:54,360 –> 00:04:59,182the, the, the providers are doing,it’s very expensive propositions.9100:04:59,248 –> 00:04:59,565Yeah.9200:04:59,565 –> 00:05:03,886And, now that we have gottena few use cases in production,9300:05:04,137 –> 00:05:07,440we have been able to, starting to evaluate9400:05:07,640 –> 00:05:11,010maybe some domain specific model.9500:05:11,227 –> 00:05:13,379Yeah. Doesn’t have to sit in the cloud.Right.9600:05:13,379 –> 00:05:16,199That’swhere we are starting to dabble into,9700:05:17,934 –> 00:05:19,619in-house hosted,9800:05:19,619 –> 00:05:23,906manage, small languagemodel or domain specific language models.9900:05:23,906 –> 00:05:28,127and this really is in linewith many of the research10000:05:28,127 –> 00:05:32,332that I think IDC has published as well,thinking about, hey, with the compute,10100:05:32,332 –> 00:05:37,086with the power over the coolingand also the sustainability agenda, right?10200:05:37,103 –> 00:05:38,121Yeah.10300:05:38,121 –> 00:05:42,975The cloud proposition with AI is goingto be very expensive for every one of us.10400:05:43,076 –> 00:05:43,409Yeah.10500:05:43,409 –> 00:05:48,297And and trying to rationalizethat is really very important.10600:05:48,498 –> 00:05:48,981Yeah.10700:05:48,981 –> 00:05:51,868And I think, you know, I was justthinking about this as you were speaking10800:05:51,868 –> 00:05:54,020because you’re working on premand you’re still you.10900:05:54,020 –> 00:05:58,291I’m, I’m assuming you have teamsto support that you can still evolve11000:05:58,291 –> 00:06:01,794your on prem cloud storageor your on prem storage11100:06:02,011 –> 00:06:05,248so that you’re retraining your staffor upgrading your staff,11200:06:05,281 –> 00:06:06,866you know, and training themand making sure you have11300:06:06,866 –> 00:06:08,334the proper skills to manage it there.11400:06:08,334 –> 00:06:12,872So I think